suit combined to take her feet out from under her. She came up with the gun
trained wide on the bridge—but there was no one, only the one man, who was not
moving.
No sign of Curran or Sandor. Nothing. They were gone.
Taken somewhere, she thought, struggling to her feet as Deirdre and Neill
followed her. She staggered across the deck and stopped, hanging on the arm of
the number one cushion, the gun trained downward at a corpse in blue coveralls.
She swallowed her nausea and fired again for good measure, greatly relieved that
the body prone on the floor failed to react. Then she shoved off from the
command pit and circled the area through the other consoles, staggering from the
weight and sucking too-warm air through a sore throat. She fumbled the oxygen
on, felt for the corridor wall, her vision limited by the helmet, got the door
open to Sander’s cabin and used the still-burning suit light to find her way in
the dark of it. She cast about for the drawer he had named, pulled open the
toiletries drawer under the mirror and rummaged among the dried-up remnants of
some previous tenant—a man, that one —shoved jars and tubes aside, found it, a
slip of paper that her gloved hands could not unfold. She ripped a glove off,
found a number.
Good luck, he had written along with it. If you’ve got this, one of two things
has happened. In either case, take care of her.
She blinked, caught by an impulse of guilt… remembered what she was about, then,
and what was at stake, and headed out of the cabin—past Neill in the doorway.
She went for the bridge, staggering and leaning back in the downward pitch of
the deck. Neill followed her, as reckless and reeling.
Deirdre had gotten her helmet off, and set it on the console and dragged the
body out of the way. Allison jerked the other glove off, fought with the helmet
catches and lifted it off. The backpack weighed on her—she started to shed that,
and abandoned the thought in her anxiety to get at comp.
She bent over the keyboard and keyed the number in.
“Hello, Sandy,” a voice said, nearly stopping her heart. A menu of functions and
code numbers leapt to the screen in front of her. “How are you?”
She picked the security function, keyed it through. A list of accesses came to
the screen with x’s and o’s.
“Sandy, is there some problem? I can instruct in security procedures if you ask
me. In any case, secure the bridge; this is always your last retreat. Stay calm.
Always keep food and water on the bridge in case. Keep a gun by you and power
down the rest of the sectors if it comes to that.”
“Lord,” Neill muttered. “What’s it doing?”
“It’s right,” she decided suddenly, looking about her. “We put the locks on.
He’s gone; and Curran is; and they’ve got them out there somewhere. We’ve got to
be sure there’s no one left in the holds.” The computer went on in its
monologue, unstoppable. She keyed the doors closed, one and the other, and took
comp back to its listing.
“What can I do for you?” it asked.
And waited. She stared at the boards, panting under the weight she carried. A
wild idea occurred to her, that they might all go out onto the docks and try
whether some resistance might be left on Venture Station: if they could join up
with stationers trying to fight off this intrusion—
No, she thought, it was too remote a chance. Too likely to end in a shooting:
there were probably Mazianni guards right outside.
And the Mazianni would expect to change guards on the ship at some reasonable
interval.
She kept running through the listings, finance, and plumbing and navigation.
Customs, one said; and Law; and Banks; and Exchange; and In Case, one said. She
pushed that one.
“Sandy” the voice said gently, “if you’re into this one, the worst has happened,
I guess; and of course I don’t know where or who—but I love you. Sandy—I’ll say
that first. And there are several things you can do. I’ll lay them out for you—”